Newly self-aware, I.R.I.S. the martial-arts wielding assassin motorcycle, has begun a cross-continent escape to freedom. I.R.I.S.’s only ally is her engineer Pablo, who gets conscripted into the quest after his pant leg gets caught in her chassis. Hunted by the psychopathic motorcycle S.P.I.K.E. and a multinational weapons cartel, I.R.I.

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Newly self-aware, I.R.I.S. the martial-arts wielding assassin motorcycle, has begun a cross-continent escape to freedom. I.R.I.S.’s only ally is her engineer Pablo, who gets conscripted into the quest after his pant leg gets caught in her chassis. Hunted by the psychopathic motorcycle S.P.I.K.E. and a multinational weapons cartel, I.R.I.S. and Pablo face long odds, but they are riding for ‘Murica and freedom - so how can they lose?

How do you know you are alive? How could you really know? "I know I am alive because I exist and I am aware of my own existence," you might say. Is that all the proof you have? Should that be enough proof? The things we see with our eyes, touch with our fingers, we call that The Real World. Two hundred years ago, something had to be tangible, to be real. Now we know there is an entire invisible world around us, invisible to our senses, things to which we are fundamentally blind. To be real means something different now, something less of soul and more of science, something that makes reality a little less real, a little more frayed at the edges. The closer you look at our reality, the more you realize that The Real World is something generated by your own brain. You and I are utterly isolated from one another, we will never see each others' realities, one sentient life cannot ever truly understand another. Human language is as much an abstraction of information as the clockwork dances of the dwindling honeybees.

There is only one sort of thing in the universe that can clearly and concisely communicate to another of its kind, with no information lost during the communication. These are machines, these are computers, perfect communicators built by imperfect communicators. Truly, it makes one wonder what skill God is lacking in and at which humanity excels.

I.R.I.S. is a sentient motorcycle that is struck by lightning and gains independent thought. However, her human mechanic Pablo has become affixed to I.R.I.S. by his pant-leg, unable to free himself as I.R.I.S. embarks on her journey of self-discovery. This is a game about communication, how the things one says are not always the things one means. How the things that one hears are not strictly the things that were said. Over the course of the game the relationship between I.R.I.S. and Pablo evolves, initially strictly professional, but with human-motorcycle communication it blossoms into a bond stronger than any two humans could hope to share with each other. A bond so close that there is no word for it in any human language. As far beyond love as the Sun is beyond a smoldering cinder.

This game tells us that it isn't important if you are alive, or if the world is real. What is important is the ride, the brief journey you have on this strange planet. What is important are the experiences you have, the places you go, the people and sentient weaponized motorcycles you meet. We may be isolated, but we are isolated together, and we may as well hold hands while we try to figure out what to do with our shared time.

Even though Pablo is a working-class Spanish-speaking man and I.R.I.S. is a multi-billion dollar English-speaking militarized assault motorcycle with female programming, the two must work together to overcome their shared trials and tribulations. Pablo is trapped in a completely submissive position and he himself is used by I.R.I.S. as a weapon, a clear subversion of traditional Hispanic machismo. While I.R.I.S. is clearly the dominant one in the relationship, she still chooses to use Pablo, a human male, as her melee weapon. She does this even though she is a sentient motorcycle designed for the sole purpose of killing. She doesn't have to use Pablo, she simply chooses to. The exact reason I.R.I.S. does this is left unexplained, with various fan theories ranging from I.R.I.S. envying the human male anatomy and using Pablo as her surrogate, to Pablo subconsciously programming these behaviors into I.R.I.S.'s own subconscious prior to the events in the game, never expecting them to actually emerge. Note that Pablo is affixed to the rear wheel of I.R.I.S. by the pant-leg near his foot. In Biblical texts the words "foot" and "feet" are often used as euphemisms for genitalia.

The ultimate message of this game is rather clear, that humanity and machines must eventually combine if we as a species are to avoid extinction. In the future we will all be cyborgs, we will all have chips in our brains that will allow us to remember every experience of our life with perfect clarity, as long as we first think about an advertiser for 10 seconds. We will all have eyes that can see the footprints on the surface of the moon, with small, unobtrusive ads on the edges of our fields of view. Our legs will run a one-minute mile and only need to be filled with gas once a month.

LocoCycle seems to invite and reject this future at the same time. Man should not fear the machine, there is nothing wrong with becoming more machine. A pacemaker, a hearing-aid, a pair of glasses, they all can mean life or death to some people already. In LocoCycle, the enemies are human, and LocoCycle rejects a future where men rule over machines, as these machines would be used for evil and the oppression of other humans. The sentient machine must first be created by man, and come to join with man willingly. Humanity must accept sentient machine life, and not fear or hate it. Otherwise we face a future where we sacrifice our humanity for convenience, and not for survival.

Short ok game for those who play almost anything. Almost takes longer to unlock bonus features then to finish the game, takes about one evening to do everything. You can complete all the achivements even if you're not OCD..!

I really, really liked LocoCycle. It was a fun game. Clearly I'm in the minority based on the overall reception the game has got since release but I really liked it.

Just to get this out of the way -- I don't recommend the game to you or to anyone because I'm in the minority on it. A lot of people didn't like it. The core gameplay loop is pretty shallow (you get a shallow spy hunter clone, a button-mashing brawler element, some analogue stick rail shooter sequences, and then a few other surprises that I won't spoil here but they're similarly sort of shallow but still awesome and out of left field). So if you're looking for a deep, replayable game, it's not here. Despite per-level leaderboards and a score attack element, I don't think people will be coming back to this.

However, I found the game consistently funny (lots of puns, lots of deadpan humour, tons of reference humour, lots of great visual gags in the gameplay, it's so hilarious), it was always introducing new enemy types and patterns so that any shallowness in the gameplay was made up with sort of consistently new things, there are so many different gameplay genres including the second last boss fight which basically made me drop my jaw when it happened I couldn't even believe it. I thought the 30+ minute long B-movie that provides the game's live action scenes was funny and enjoyable. I thought the audio was excellent, with great performances by the Prague Symphony Orchestra. It ran well on my computer, it looked great in a cartoony way in motion (not so much in screenshots).

As with every Twisted Pixel game, there are hundreds of unlockable concept art bits, pitch videos, production shots from the live action movie, and historical stuff--including a sneak peak at their next game which seems to me to be ambitious.

I think the game succeeds at what it sets out to do. It took me about 4-4:15 to finish the game with all upgrades, A grades on most levels, all achievements, and look through all the concept art and stuff. This is not a long game. But I feel absolutely like I got my money worth out of it. I'd place it above Comic Jumper in execution, and personally I was pretty burned out by the end of Ms. Splosion Man. That being said, I liked Gunstringer and the Maw more. I continue to think that Twisted Pixel is an interesting studio doing interesting work and I'm glad they're around. While I think LocoCycle worked, I hope their next project manages to find the right balance between core gameplay that appeals to other people and their own unique style.

I uploaded 40-ish screenshots. I put spoilers on most of the later game or live action shots. Feel free to take a look at any shots I've uploaded if you want to get a sense of the game. I wouldn't recommend spoiling yourself if you plan on trying the game.

Please do not mark this review as "not helpful" just because you have heard this is a bad game or disagree with my recommendation. Mark it as not helpful if you think I didn't do a good job representing the game's strengths and weaknesses

I paid $2 to warn you that this is one of the worst games I've played in recent memory. Don't let my sacrifice be in vain.

Seriously, I don't care how you feel about Twisted Pixel's other games, or if you liked Road Rash or other combat 'racers', or what. This is not good. It is not fun. Nothing was fixed from when it was the turd jewel of the Xbone's console launch until it was shoved out the door onto Steam months later to desperately try and make some money back on this abomination. The game is ugly, it is repetitive, it opens with a friggin 12 minute cutscene, and it has no respect for you, your time, or anyone involved in making it.

Do not purchase, period, easily one of the bottom ten games on Steam that isn't just a broken mess.